Make Your Business Green

Have you noticed how incredibly inefficient businesses are when it comes to energy? You would think that places that are about the bottom line would try to do everything they could do reduce how much energy they use. Most likely the issue is that when you go to work, you do not have as much ownership over the energy bills or how others use their energy.

I work in a hospital that is incredibly inefficient. I mean, do we really need to run ventilators *all* night long? Of course I'm kidding, but when I walk around the place during my 30 hour work shifts, you notice how much energy is being wasted throughout the place.

It would be great if you could try get a hold of energy bills for your place of employment and then implement simply energy saving principles and follow the energy bills and any difference goes back to employees or something of that nature. I mean the money is just getting wasted.

Most of the time, the changes does not even take asking your boss for some money to change things. Frankly, just shut off the lights when they are not being used. Shut off bathroom lights. Shut off your office lights when you have a window and the sun is shining. Shut off your computer when you leave is a huge thing. Shut off machines not being used in general. I suppose everyone's business is different and uses energy different, but I'm sure you could walk around and find huge drains on energy.

Then there is the stuff that takes a little up-front money but pays for itself over a few years. This will involve either some fancy pie graphs or a great powerpoint with animation and sound to convince your boss to do it.
-Maybe if you business is solid and going to be around, go to LED lights.
-Washing machines at your place? Go frontloaders.
-Encourage natural lighting.
-Discourage formal dress codes so that people can wear what they want and they can adapt
to lowering the temp on the termostat in the winter and raising it a bit in the summer.
-You could go with gray water systems, use low flow toilets, or on-demand water heaters.
-How much paper does your job waste? ...and on stupid memos no less. Use both sides and
send things electronically when you can. That saves both paper, ink and
printer upkeep/replacement. oh and sanity.

Other suggestions??

There is a great podcast about this kind of stuff in on NOW/PBS that just came out. Give a listen.

What kind of car should I drive next?

Hmmm, what kind of car should I get next? Please don't say a minivan. Just because I have kids doesn't mean I am doomed to that fate. Anyway, I have been trying to look to see what would be the most environmentally friendly car out there in America. (all the good cars are overseas). Lately I have been looking into whether Diesel is the way to go. Yup, good old, black smoke producing diesel. I figure I should get to see the exhaust I am producing. Really, the days of the old, toxic diesel engine are fading because of recent new laws saying the engine needs to meet stricter exhaust standards. So, if my kids won't get asthma because of the engine, can I save them from too warm of weather, so to speak? Possibly. Diesel claims a 20% more efficient engine. This is taking into consideration that it takes more energy to produce diesel. The other nice thing is that cars tend to last a bit longer with diesel which will reduce greenhouse gases because you don't have to build as many new cars.

However, an interesting article on http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/04-12/diesel-vs-gasoline-article.htm would suggest that gas is still a good way to go based on refining and day-to-day use. I don't know how scientific this chart is, but it does come from the Union of Concerned Scientist. I imagine them to be a bunch of guys at a big oval table with very furrowed brows. You?

I suppose I can change that car to biodiesel and smell Mcdonald's french fries all the time or I could get a hybrid. Oh, speaking of which, I just read a consumer report review that the Ford Escape Hybrid is a bad bad option. Hmmm Ford being a bad idea? Who would have thought it?

Broadband vs Dial-Up

So I was just reading an interesting article about whether you should buy broadband internet or dial-up internet. The issue would be cost of the two vs speed. This article claimed that if you were to buy broadband you would save $30 a year in electricity because you would complete your searches quicker, type your emails quicker, download everything quicker and get off the computer quicker. The key to this was also turning off your computer quicker. So you save money by getting the better product. I'm not going to argue with how much money you would save because that would be different for everyone. However, we can all agree that we need to turn our computers off when we are done with them and are not going to use them for awhile. No need to leave them on all night long or while we are at work.